Tag Archives: loss of innocence

After I got my first period — less than a month before my twelfth birthday — is right around when the two women began including me in their gabbing sessions, in the kitchen.

At first, I joined reluctantly: I would much rather “waste my life away”, as mother dramatically accused me of, with a novel. But face it! When the two of them returned from their separate errands, both beautiful and smelling of the same perfume — the flirtation of all the men still echoing in their voices — I would be a major “dura” to resist the temptation of their company.

And the stories, the day’s gossip — the life force pumping through the street of our town — seemed more titillating than my mother’s romance novels (through which I, when home alone, would rummage and then re-hide them in the cupboards of her bedside stand). Now: Our neighborhood wasn’t really happening. Someone would die, occasionally, after drinking too much. Someone else got married, before an accidental pregnancy showed. Both the town’s funerals and its weddings could be attended by anyone. For Russians, it’s bad fucking karma to turn guests away! So, as processions crawled through the main roads (not many Russians owned cars, not in those days!), neighbors joined in; because at the end of either line, they’d find free food. And what’s more important: Vodka!

Breathlessly, I listened to the women’s stories, never putting my two kopeks in. Assigned the most menial jobs in the kitchen, like peeling of potatoes or sorting out grains of rice, I kept my head down and worked my ears overtime. At times, the exchange of information was packed with details so intense and so confusing, it hurt my brain to follow. Still, I tried to comprehend in silence because asking either my sis or mother to repeat — was borderline suicidal.

“Now, mamotchka!” (Marinka was already notorious for kissing up. She’d learned how to work our mother’s ego.) “Have you heard about Uncle Pavel?”

“Nyet! What?”

The way my sis was blushing now, in the opal light of fall’s sunset, solidified that she was rapidly turning into her mother’s daughter: A stunner, simply put. The prospects of the townswomen’s matchmaking had already begun coming up at the dinner table; and every time, Marinka turned red and stole sheepish glances at our father. There was no way around it: She was easily becoming the prettiest girl in town! Not in that wholesome and blonde Slavic beauty way, but an exotic creature, with doe eyes, long hair of black waves and skin the color of buckwheat honey.

Marinka carried on. “I got this from Ilyinitchna,” she gulped. She’d gone to far, corrected herself: “Anna Ilyinitchna, I mean.” (The tone of informality common for most Russian women was still a bit to early for Marinka to take on. But she was getting there: Whenever she joined our mother’s girlfriends for tea, she was permitted to address them with an informal “you”.)

Mother was already enticed. “What?! What’d you hear?” she wiped her hands on the kitchen towel and turned her entire body toward my sister.

“He and Tatiana’s daughter…” There, Marinka took notice of me. She looked back at our mother for a go-ahead. The silence was thick enough to be cut with a knife. I pretended to not have heard anything.

But mom had no patience for not knowing: “Oy, Marina! Don’t stretch it out, I beg of you! What did you hear?!”

Sis ran her nails to tame the fly-aways by pushing them behind her ears. Her hair was thick and gathered into a messy construction on the back of her head. Ringlets of it escaped and clung to her sweaty neck.

“Well?! WHAT!”

Whenever mother spoke, I noticed the tension Marinka’s shoulders — a habit of a child who took on a regular beatings from a parent. In boys, one saw defiant thoughts of brewing rebellion. But it looked different in girls. We had to bear. It could take decades to grow out of oppression. Some women never made it out. They would be transferred from the rule of their parents’ household to that of their husbands’. Forgiveness already started seeming too far-fetched.

Marinka blushed again. Lord, give us the courage! “He and Tatiana’s daughter were seen having dinner together in the city. He took her to a rest-aur-ant!” She slowed down, for effect: Dining at Soviet restaurants was NOT a casual happening. “And she was dressed like the last whore of Kaliningrad. She now wears a perm, although I’m sure it’s not her parents’ money that pay for it.” Sis was on a roll. “I mean you see how Tatyana dresses! The thing she wore for her husband’s funeral! A woman of her age should watch such things!”

It felt like something lodged inside my throat. Was it words? Or a hair-thin bone from a sardine sandwich from my breakfast? Although I didn’t understand the situation completely, I knew it wasn’t something that left my brain untarnished.

Mother, by now, was smiling ear to ear. “Hold up! Which daughter?! Oh, Lord! Is it Oksanka?!”

Marinka shot another stare in my direction. You’ll break your eyes, I thought. Oh man, I wanted to get out of there! Blinking rapidly to remove the layer of forming tears — the shame! alas, the shame of it all! — I fished out the next wrinkled potato from the iron basin at my feet and hurriedly scraped it with the dull knife.

“Well, Oksanka, mamotchka! Of course! She’s got that job at the City Hall, remember?”

“Well,” mom shook her head. “WELL. That little bitch! She knows how to get around, I’ll give her that!”

I looked at Marinka, she — at me. Mother bluntness was a common happening but even we were surprised at her bluntness.

“The apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree,” mother concluded. Marinka chuckled, fear freezing her eyelids into an expression of panic. The clock of her girlhood had stopped its final countdown.

Will you just look at him?! A little cock around a chicken coop, roughing up his feathers, in a company of obese pigeons.

And what is THIS: A smile?! His life is “six business days” away from altering its course: from the heart-breaking mediocracy of it to the new pattern of brutality — of evil begets evil. It’s at the mercy of some randomly selected buggers like me, so tired and overworked that we are no longer able to experience a patriotic high from this pain-in-the-ass civic duty; or from the frilly concepts of justice and what’s right. We are: The Who’s Who, and what of it?!

We’ve all got our ideas, that’s for sure! Our principles! I stand by this, I swear by that; I vow, I believe. We pump up our chest. We force our eyes to glimmer with conviction. But what of it? And who is he who aims at human life?

Okay, get up! The judge walked in. Get up! Don’t waiver but don’t be cocky either. The white folks — they don’t like that. Stand up!

Oh, man.

This. Blows.

In my belief, there used to be much more to breathing. But slowly, it has whittled down to simple truth — not even fairness, but truth — while all the rest has fallen by the wayside. Still, it is more than I can say about some people!

Like this loudmouth fat girl I haven’t seen here, on the first day. Today, in clunky, loud rain boots with worn out heel caps, she marches up and down the marble floors, with People Magazine under her armpit. (She’s interested in People.) And meaning to be seen and heard while on her cell phone, she flaunts those words that show no sympathy, no modesty and no distress to any of the details of today — but having “to get outta here”. She “can’t afford this”! She “has no tolerance for shit like that”! And obviously, she cannot manage to allow for the rest of us to wait in silence. Now — is her time; her stage. And we, the people, listen:

“Yeah, like, that would be the biggest tragedy, right? I mean, this jury duty — SUCKS! It’s, like, the worst thing that has happened to me, EVER!” A hair flip of vaguely red and stringy hair — and she suddenly reminds of somebody who once aroused the same aftertaste of nausea in my trachea. But who?

And this little man is smiling now. You’re scared shitless, aren’t you, kid? What have you got besides hormonal bravado and a shitty cover-up of fear. For this is not a smile of someone hopeless; but neither is he smiling to be liked by us.

They must’ve cleaned him up the night before and given him this bulky dress shirt of some unmemorable color. As if not to offend. Not to arouse all the self-righteous and the ones who have been programed by a life of fear. Whenever he turns his head, the collar sways around his skinny, post-pubescent neck like untied sails around a mast. He’s small. He’s tiny. He is a fucking kid!

Manslaughter. Ain’t that a fucked-up thing?!

Mi abuelo (I miss the old fuck!): He wouldda given me a smackin’ for haunching over right now.

“I didn’t come to this good country to see my first grandson groveling in front of white people!”

Don’t grovel, man!

His skin is ashen and uneven. I wonder where he spent last night…

The truth is: I am clueless. My knowledge of the judicial system is laced with fear, and it is mostly defined by bad cop shows produced by Hollywood (but shot in New York City — for that “edgier”, “more urban” look). Was he allowed to sleep at home, while waiting for this trial? When was the last time he squeezed the hips of this one girl who keeps coming around and holding his skinny, shaven head in that flat space along her chest while her gigantic breasts fall to the sides, right after he is done? When was the last time he was kissed and kept his eyes open, focused on the girl’s birthmarks and her taste?

When did the young abandon their reckless curiosity and started chasing justice?

Not guilty! Innocent, Your Honor!

Aw, shit! I guess it’s not my time yet. FUCK.

My god, you poor kid! What little you have had, in life! And you’re about to lose that too!

No, wait! I can’t be wondering these things! This man-child KILLED somebody! Sure, “allegedly”, but killed. “Allegedly,” he’d killed somebodies, actually! Not one but two, and one — was a young woman.

There is an old man glueing words together on the first panel of us. He’s speaking slowly, voice quivering, possessing no knowledge on how to use a mic. The poor soul can barely speak English:

“I… eh… I’m… bery scared, um… guns.”

My lawyer’s taking notes. He better be dismissing this old chink!

How have we come to this? What does this say, about us, when we no longer find the roots of it, the causes; but only our objections and dismissals. I stand by this, I vow to that. And rather than examining the history of violence — what makes us snap, then heal but harden? — we carry on imposing more violence. We call it “retribution”. The “crime” — to “punishment”.

These somebodies were somebodies’ beloveds, I remember. “Allegedly.”

The fat girl is dissecting People, in the row ahead of mine. Shit. Of whom does she remind me?

“Beyond the reasonable doubt.” That’s funny asking this complaining bunch out here to be reasonable!

The mic is passed to the lanky academic in wrinkled clothes, who’s sitting in the front row of the panel. It’s happening at the request of the stenographer: A visibly unhappy woman who rolls her eyes in the direction of the judge, for every time she cannot hear a juror. A potential juror, sorry. The wrinkled man refuses to say one word and steps to the side. He walks in front of the long desk where the kid is now slumping forward, in his seat. The silence that takes up the auditorium is nosy, odd and angry. The man returns. Sits down. He shoots the kid a glance. He’s gloating. How hateful! How have we come to this?

The face that stands at the other end of a cocked gun gets down to basics. The winning arguments of life.

A kink in the armor: Is that his fault?

My turn.

Do I understand “the burden of having his guilt proved” to me — “beyond the reasonable doubt”?

The shades were closed. The house was dark. It had always struck me strange the way she’d keep all windows locked down, in order to keep the cold air inside. The manufactured cool would dry out her skin and the house would smell mechanical. She’d complain, blow the arid air through her deviated septum; then slather her age spots with some sort of bleaching cream.

She lived too close to the dessert; and only late at night, she’d give the house fans a rest. Their constant humming would finally die down, and suddenly the sounds of gentle quietness in nature would be overheard through an occasionally open window. The skin of my scalp would relax at the temples: I would forget to notice my constant frown during the 20-hour long humming. My face acquired new habits since living in this house, and I was beginning to forget the girl who had been asked to pay the price of her childhood — in an exchange for the better future.

But on that day, it was too early to allow the nature to come in, yet. And as I entered the empty house, I immediately noticed the hum. I had been gone for half a week: too short of a time to forget the climate of this house entirely — and most definitely not enough to forgive it! I took off my shoes, remembering the stare she’d give her visitors whenever they were too oblivious to obey. Slowly, I began to pass from room to room.

The light gray carpet that covered most of the house’s footage was immaculately clean. And if there was an occasional rug — under a chair or a coffee table — it usually marked an accidental spill of food or drink by a very rare house guest. I’d be the only one who knew that though: I’d witness all their hidden faults. And she would run the vacuum every night, pulling and yanking it in very specific directions. Those vacuum markings had to remain there undisturbed; and only those who didn’t know better were kindly permitted to destroy them with their footsteps.

I opened the bedroom’s double doors first but found no courage to come in. Instead, I stood on the cold titles, on the other side, and studied the footsteps by her bed. There was a cluster of them, right by the nightstand. Is that where she had been picked up by the paramedics? I looked for outlines of boots imprinted into the fur of the carpet. I thought I saw none.

The living room carpet seemed undisturbed. The markings of the vacuum, which she must’ve done the night before, were still perfectly parallel. The cold tiles of the kitchen floor had no residue of food. She’d wash those on her hands and knees with paper towels. And she would go over it until the wet towel would stop turning gray. No dishes in the sink. No evidence of an unfinished meal. No evidence of life at all. I began to wonder where she’d collapsed.

The door to my former bedroom was shut. Most likely, it had remained so since I’d departed. I made it to the office — the only space where some disarray was less prohibited. The bills where broken down by due dates and neatly piled perpendicularly, on top of one another. Her husband had a habit of resting his feet on the edge of the corner desk, as he played on the computer for hours, until she’d fall asleep. Then, he’d come into my bedroom.

My bedroom. Its door was closed. I turned the handle and expected for the usual catch of its bottom against the rug that she insisted on keeping on the other side. Strangely, it covered up no visible spots. I pushed it open.

It was a sight of madness. One woman’s rage had turned the place into a pile of shredded mementos, torn photos and broken tokens of forsaken love. The bedcovers were turned over. The sheets had been peeled off the mattress two-thirds down, as if by someone looking for the evidence of liquids near my sex. The stuffed toys which normally complete my line-up of pillows were now strewn all over the floor, by the wall opposite of my headrest.

On top of an overturned coffee table I saw my letters: My cards to her and hers — to me. She’d even found the letters in my parents’ hand, and she shredded them to piece. Nothing was off limits. No love was sacred after hers had been betrayed.

I stepped inside to see the other side of one torn photograph that flew the closest to the door. At first, I tried to catch my breath. A feeling on sickly heaviness got activated in the intestines. In murder mysteries that she adored to watch with me, I’d seen detectives scurry off into the corner furthest from the evidence, and they would throw up — or choke at least — at the atrocity of crimes against humanity. Apparently, my insides wanted to explode from the other end.

I paced myself. Carefully, that I, too, would not collapse, I bent down and picked up the shredded photo. It was my face, torn up diagonally across the forehead. On the day of my high school graduation, her husband had come over to the side of the fence where we were beginning to line up. I can see the faces of my classmates in the background. They smiling at his lens. They are supposed to, as he — was “supposed” to be my father.

He was not. And I’m not smiling. I’ve raised one eyebrow, and my lips are parted as if I’d just told him to fuck off. Not even there, he would allow for me to be without him. Not even there, I could be alone for long enough to remember the girl who’d been asked for her childhood in an exchange… for what?

We didn’t know any different: We weren’t supposed to. We were children, still. Besides, to us — it would be just another adventure.

Most of us (if not all) had seen our parents working on land for their entire lives, tending to the whims of nature just so they could have a little extra to live on during the winter. It didn’t matter if you were a villager or one of those city people who thought they were better than the rest: Everyone worked, in those days.

The villagers had it a little harder, especially in terms of prejudice. They were the simpler people, with more obvious needs and uncomplicated vices. Most of their children would never finish their education either due to their parents’ alcoholism or because of being bullied, brutally, in school. Those kids wore poorer clothes than us and carried lice in their overgrown hair. They smelled of manure, tobacco and liquor: They smelled — of hard life.

For as long as they could tolerate their young lives’ injustices, they would become outcasts; our plebeian jokers. Soon enough, though, they would give way to their shame, drop out of school — and grow up way too early. And the hard life continued to loom, above our unknowing heads. But the ones that lived by land knew it earlier than the rest.

In any city apartment, one could find a tiny garden on a balcony. Radishes and tomatoes were planted in flower beds, upfront. And in the spring, after the soil would thaw out just enough, our grownups would begin to leave the city, for the weekends. They would take the trains into the suburbs — and they would return to their land.

Of course, somebody always had to be paid off along the way: Such was the Russian tradition. And we didn’t see any malice in that, or any particular injustice. So, we bribed the city officials to get the better patches of land. With the owners of live stock, we bartered in exchange for cow dung. The drivers of tractors were paid off in vodka. To each — his own.

Summers seemed a bit easier: Even if the money was tight, there was always at least some food in the home. The early months were spent on gathering; and for the entire length of August and September, each woman busied herself with making preserves for the winter. So, they would work — our mothers — rising early, tending to land; then, spending the rest of their days on mere survival.

But we, the young ones, would always turn it into a game. In groups, we walked each other home; and as we climbed the stairs of our apartment buildings, we sniffed the doors on every flight:

“Ooh. Strawberry jam! Most certainly, strawberry!” we’d smell the lusty sweetness of slowly simmering fruit, then say goodbye to the comrade heading in, into that doorway.

“This one — is pickling cabbage.”

“She is always pickling cabbage!” the disappointed child would grumble and knock on the door of his forever disappointing mother.

We were all just trying to survive. Although, for a while there, we didn’t know how difficult it was, for our mothers: We didn’t have to — we were children. And to us, everything — was an adventure, just for a little while longer.

My doorway always gave off aromas much more complex than our young palettes could’ve known: Green tomato jam, prune compote with red currants, garlic-stuffed cucumbers. Motha — was always a bit of a witch, at the stove; and I couldn’t hide my thrill at her being so different. And I couldn’t wait to find her in the kitchen: What could she’ve possibly come up with, that time?

She would rise early, back in those days. And by mid-day, several cauldrons would be boiling, simmering, stewing on the stove.

“Here! Try this!” the woman with curlers in her hair and sweat on her upper lip would order me while shoving a tiny saucer with pink or purple jam foam into my dirty hands. She wouldn’t even say hello.

Despite the occasional sand on my teeth, “MMMM,” I’d mutter.

“Good! Watch the pots! I’m going out!”

Motha would depart into the bathroom and emerge in five minutes doused in perfume and sparkles. I didn’t mind her departure.

In the fall, after the first month back in school, there would be field trips — to the fields. Normally, they would happen on a Saturday; and we would have to rise early, showing up to the already busy school yard in our best peasant attire.

Most of the time, the children of the villagers wouldn’t show: They had their own land to tend to. Still, we would judge them a little, while shuffling ourselves in between the seats of a school bus, waiting to depart at sunrise. We would be taken to the fields: to gather freshly dug-out potatoes or to gather sugar beats, for live stock.

The labor would be hard, and we would overhear the upper class men complain about such an injustice. But we still didn’t know any different: We didn’t have to — we were children. It would become much harder, soon enough. But for just a little longer, we could be children — and life could be much simpler.

So, that day, when motha decided to bring home a coconut, I didn’t even wonder if she had to stand in line for it.

“Where did you find this thing?!” I asked instead, while clutching the coconut to my chest. It felt prickly.

I knew she must’ve gone to some fancy store in the capital. She had taken a bus and probably a couple of trolleys; and then another bus, packed with other mothers — in order to bring this thing home: A coconut!

In the midst of the last days of the Soviet Union, she had brought home — a coconut!

In response to my question, motha would start telling a story. But motha sucks at storytelling; and soon enough, long before delivering the punchline, she started laughing and flailing her arms around, completely unaware of her vanity (and considering motha always knew the effect of her beauty, such abandonment — was quite endearing).

She tilted her head back, as if in the midst of some private exorcism, and she hollered and yelped in between her words. Tears started glistening in the corners of her eyes. And she would smack me every once in a while, as if taunting me to participate in her hysteria; and even though she stood no taller than 1.5 meters from the ground, motha could always pack a mighty punch.

Pretty soon, things in her vicinity started falling down to the floor. Motha crouched down to pick them up; but then, she just stayed there — laughing.

I don’t know what the gist of her story was, at first: I just kept clutching the coconut. I wasn’t really sure how breakable that thing was, and I didn’t want motha to knock it over by accident. Sure, I’ve seen those things before, most likely on some Mexican telenovela or in a film about rich American people, in a pretty town, on some pretty shore. Both genres would have been narrated in a monotone male voice of the translator, yet I still managed to get addicted to these latest imports on our television screens, full-heartedly.

Because in the last years of the Soviet Union, the world suddenly became much larger — and not as intimidating as it had been previously assumed. And despite the utter chaos, my own homeland began to seem much more human.

And despite the last days of my innocence — the last days of my childhood — it was impossible not to laugh along with my motha, in that moment.

I think she was trying to tell me about her asking for a tutorial from the cashier woman at the store.

“And why are you asking ME, lady citizen?” the bitter woman had responded. You’d think she would be happy to work in such a fancy establishment, with more access to deficit items the rest of us could only see on some Mexican telenovelas or in an American film. But apparently, Soviet cashiers were bitter regardless of their situation.

“Do I look like I’m married to an apparatchik, to you?!” — the disgruntled woman attacked my motha. (I have a feeling that interaction didn’t end well, for the cashier; because with motha — it’s better not to push it.)

Bitterness — was the worst consequence of those days. The flood of unexpected hardships was actually quite easy to understand, because poverty had always existed in my Motha’land. But while we were all poor together, it must’ve bugged the grown-ups less. It was when the distance between the new wealth and the old poverty became obvious that Russians began to express their discontentment. (And we aren’t really a happy bunch, to begin with.)

“So, it’s up to you and me, rabbit!” motha concluded and marched out into the living-room.

She wasn’t too keen on tender nicknames for me, so I just stayed in my place and waited: With motha — it’s better not to push it. Something heavy fell down in the living-room. I heard my motha swear. The thought of our neighbors below made me cringe: Daily, the poor bastards had to endure the heavy footsteps of this tiny woman who stood no taller than 1.5 meters from the ground.

Motha reappeared in the doorway.

“How about it then?!”

Her face was still flushed from laughter, and her chest was heaving. In one of her manicured hands, motha was holding an ax (oh, dear Lenin!), and with the other, she was waving a hammer and a screwdriver above her head.

“Oy, no!” I said. And, “Bad idea!” — I thought to myself.

“Whoever doesn’t take risks — doesn’t drink champagne!” motha declared and proceeded to march into the kitchen. I, the coconut, and our offensively obese red cat followed her.

The operation that unfolded in the kitchen was less than graceful: Crouching down in her miniskirt, motha began pounding the screwdriver into the poor piece of fruit. But the problem was she was whacking it through the side, and the thing kept rolling out of her grip. And she: She kept laughing.

“Hey, rabbit! Come help!”

Motha’s orders were never up to a negotiation, so, I obeyed. The thought of the screwdriver being hammered into my palm with my motha’s clumsy maneuver was a lot less intimidating, than her wrath. Yeah: With motha — it’s better not to push it.

But first, I examined the fruit:

“Let’s trying breaking in through these three dimples,” I suggested.

The task would have been accomplished had motha stopped collapsing into fits of laughter. And I thought: If there was ever anything more dangerous than an unhappy Russian woman, it would be a woman in throws of hysteria, holding a hammer.

Motha reached for the ax.

“Oy, no!” I rebelled and leapt to my feet. This whole situation was starting to stage itself as some Greek tragedy. And most of the time, those don’t work out well, for the children.

Motha got up, while still holding the now scuffed up fruit. With tears and make-up running down her face, she reminded me of a young girl at a Beatles concert. (The images of such strange life elsewhere were beginning to flood our press, from all parts of the world. And somehow, that world seemed much larger, less intimidating — and quite wonderful!)

“Rabbit, catch!” she threw the coconut at me.

I ducked. The fruit bounced off the doorway behind me and hit the floor. Our offensively obese red cat dashed out of the kitchen.

Motha and I lost it entirely, and when the neighbors below knocked on their ceiling, we lost it again. The glimmer of joy, dimmed in my motha’s eyes in those difficult years, considered reigniting. No matter the chaos, this beautiful woman who stood no taller than 1.5 meters from the ground, refused to grovel. And even if it took hysteria to remember how to laugh, she wouldn’t give it up.

“Show me — don’t tell me,” my brother always warns me. He, himself, is a performer and a painter; so his stories are visual. But the recipe works though, I’ve tried it: My storytelling works best when I paint a picture instead of lining-up some words.

So, there was this one time, when motha had decided to bring home a coconut…

Motha sucks at storytelling. When younger, she was anxious to teach me how to read, so I would stop bugging her for bedtime stories. Nowadays, she tells me stories all the time, and she tends to tell the punchline long before I can wrap my head around all the characters and their histories.

And when it comes to jokes, motha — is the absolute worst. She cracks herself up, and it is impossible to make out a single word through her roaring and yelping laughter. She tilts her head back, as if in the midst of some exorcism, and soon enough things around her start flying onto the floor while she flails around her arms, utterly unaware of her vanity. And it is also impossible — not to laugh with her, in return.

So, there was this one time, when mother had decided to bring home a coconut. We were living in the Soviet Union at the time…

I’ve got a lot of stories, but I suck at delivering them. I would much rather write them down. When writing, I can relive them. I can get the details out. I can get them right; or even fix them, now that I know their endings.

But I am not really good at reliving stories in front of others. Unless, of course, they are someone’s else stories, then I can perform them: “show, not tell”.

Anyway. There was this one time, when mother had decided to bring home a coconut.

We were living in the Soviet Union at the time, and coconuts weren’t much of a typical occurrence on our dinner table. No, it was all about potatoes instead: Fried potatoes, boiled potatoes — with skin and without. Roasted potatoes, potatoes in a soup. Early spring fingerling potatoes in a salad. Potato pancakes. Mashes potatoes: Those motha always insisted on mixing with bits of semi-fried onion, and I would spend more time picking it out than actually eating (which didn’t thrill my mother much). And even when we would go camping, potatoes would appear in various formats when it was time to eat: Potatoes baked in foil, roasted over an open fire potatoes. Potatoes in a soup.

A serving of macaroni would spice things up a bit. Macaroni usually meant my parents got paid, and we were living it up for a while. But then, the macaroni would be recycled too: Macaroni swimming in milk for breakfast — fried macaroni for dinner.

But this one time, mother had decided to bring home a coconut. She had been trying something out, with the family:

“A Piece of an Exotic Fruit — per Month,” was the name of the program motha had come up with.

The Soviet Union was on its way out. We didn’t know it at the time, but the country, as we knew it, was over. The economy was in the crapshoot: Folks not getting paid on time, the worth of pensions decreasing down to laughable proportions. The price of bread was growing every single day; and food was being sold in rations, according to a monthly handout of coupons. But to get that food at the market, one had to show up right after its delivery. Because, for whatever reason, there was always fewer rations than the actual people, in town. So, we would have to line up by the store, hours before it would open.

It helped that I was finally of the age to stand in some of these lines. I would get there before motha, often right after school. Later, she could take my place, and I would go home to do my homework — not to play — then, start prepping dinner. Because I was definitely past the age of innocence: I had long stopped bugging her for bedtime stories.

Sometimes, I would stand in line for long enough to get to the front of it. Soon enough though, the cashier would start announcing the lowering numbers of rations.

“Citizens!” she would holler out. Somehow, she was alway chubby and shiny; and so obviously in love with finding herself in a position of an authority. “We only have enough for twenty of you!”

People complained, shifted on their feet uncertain if they should keep on waiting — or just go home defeated. The frontrunners gloated in their places. Quickly, the last of the fortunate would be counted off. Oh, how it would suck to be standing right behind her! (I say “her”, because most of the time, the job of standing in lines was allotted to mothers.)

Still, even then, most people would keep standing, holding their place in line. Because hope dies last, doesn’t it? It can even outlast despair.

The cashier would start getting annoyed:

“I told you, citizens: We don’t have enough produce for all of you! So, don’t linger!”

She was obviously getting off. But people stayed.

They stayed! Perhaps, it took an incredibly unreasonable amount of denial to survive in such conditions. But they chose not to hear the abusive remarks by the shiny cashier; and only the ones at the very end would start chipping off, muttering, complaining:

“What is this country coming to?!”

“Mama?” I would think at that moment, wishing she would get there and relieve me from my post. I may have been long past the age of innocence, but I wasn’t yet ready to give up on my childhood.

So, that one time, when motha had decided to bring home a coconut, I didn’t even wonder if she had to stand in line for it.

“Where did you find this thing?!” I asked instead, while clutching the coconut to my chest. It felt prickly.

I knew she must’ve gone to some fancy store in the capital. She had taken a bus, and probably a couple of trolleys; and then another bus, packed with other mothers, in order to bring this thing home: A coconut!

In the midst of the last days of the Soviet Union, she had brought home — a coconut!

In response to my question, motha would start telling me a story. But motha sucks at storytelling; so, she would laugh and flail her arms around, dropping things to the floor. I would keep clutching onto the coconut.

And despite the last days of my innocence — the last days of my childhood — it was impossible not to laugh with her, in return.

There are faces on the streets of this town that make me want to whip out a camera and take them home with me: not the people — but always their faces, like yellowing Polaroids in my back pocket. Every day, I drive by them, on routes that must lead to my dreams — or at least to survival in between the dreams’ happening — and I fight the urge to leap out of the car, leave the engine running, and steal a shot or two, preferably unnoticed by my subject.

But if they do see me, I hope they aren’t offended much.

“You’re beautiful,” I’d probably say, shielding myself with kindness, as if they were my lovers telling me of their final decision to depart.

(I’m such a fucking hippie. Forgive me.)

There is a homeless man, in one of my regularly visited parking lots, who always reads a pamphlet, in a plastic chair by that neighborhood’s laundromat. He rests here, maybe even lives, with his cart parked right around the corner.

Keith. This is his spot.

The truth about Keith: He is homeless — not a pauper (and you better know the difference). He’s made that aggressively clear by the cleanness of his clothes and the presentable look of his laced-up shoes. I had tried giving him money before: I might as well have slapped Keith’s tired face with a wet towel full of sand. But food, he’ll take food. He’ll nod, humbly; thank you, and pack it away, so methodically and slow, it breaks your heart. Because if ever you have known poverty yourself, you comprehend the deficit of dignity in it. Organization and routine become your only saving graces. And that’s exactly how you get by: sweeping off crumbs of dignity from the kitchen table and into your hand; and methodically storing them away — for later.

Well, Keith’s got his dignity in spades. I can tell it by his face with carved out wrinkles and his not so poorly groomed beard. In a striking juxtaposition to his African features, a pair of lime-green eyes overlooks from above. Sometimes they freeze in a gaze of departure; and even though I’ve wondered a few times about where Keith goes when he goes like that, his eyes give out no hints. I don’t trip out about that too much though: Because the ownership of his story — is one of the few things a man should be allowed to possess.

His right eyebrow gathers into a poignant awning. Not much of a frown, it ever so slightly changes the man’s face from solemnity to something grievous. Just like that: a little shift and the departure of his lime-green eyes — and the man’s face becomes a story.

“You’re beautiful,” I’d probably say.

Another man — another story — lives just a few blocks away from my street. I am never sure where he sleeps, or where he stores his things. But he is impossible not to notice as I run to the subway station, always late and always immediately embarrassed, when I notice him.

On a cold day, the man stands underneath an electronics store sign long closed down for sale. In heat, he looms in the shadow of a bus stop nearby. The accidental passengers waiting on metallic benches seem to not mind him more than they mind the exhaust fumes from the never-ending traffic. Years ago, when I first moved here, the man used to ask them for money, while shifting on his feet. But now, he just sways there, in silence, waiting for dumb charity by someone with a guilty conscience, like my own. But mostly, he lets his life waste him away with the corrosive elements attacking his skin behind this bus stop.

Painfully thin, he sways too much when shifting on his feet, as if at any moment he can tip over and break into a thousand shards of something irreparable. But whenever I can get past my embarrassment and actually look at the man’s face, I realize it belongs to someone long departed. He seems calm, surrendered; almost smiling, with his eyes. And if he can feel the scratch of my dollars in his palm, dried up to chalky whiteness, he shivers his head a little. Those aren’t nods, but a dozen of little ones — like shivers.

Another story — another ghost — trails in the footsteps of a local woman that always sits by one of this town’s guilds. She’s irate: There ain’t no bloody surrender in her face.

On the stone fence of the building, she usually sits with her bags parked underneath her feet; and she mutters while scratching the matted hair, usually wrapped in a shredding scarf. Her clothing is nonsensical, as if she’s rummaged through a vintage shop or a drag queen’s closet, that morning. But you better be sure there’ll be some sequins somewhere on her body. And it’s not the angry face that gets my attention every time: It’s those fucking sequins!

She must’ve loved them as a little girl, as all little girls do. And as all little girls, she must’ve found them magical, like fairy dust or sparkly refections in the water from the mirror mosaic on the bottom of a pool floor. And she may have long departed — in her mind and in her face — but this child-like addiction is the only sliver of sanity that separates her from those of us, insane enough to give it up.

They are never dangerous, these faces; no more dangerous than the minds that hide behind them, storing away their stories of horror and loss from which the only sane thing to do — is to depart. Alas: The faces of the departed. There are so many of them, in this town!

Who knows what has brought them here, and why they never left. Is it because hope dies last; but when it does, it leaves a person too exhausted to depart? Or is it because they, like me, have nowhere else to go.

Because they are already — the departed, and this — is where they have departed for. And this is where they continue to depart, dragging behind their carts and their beauty — like cautionary tales for the rest of us.